


The Cabin

by edourado



Series: Hell's Kitchen Chronicles [52]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, kastle - Freeform, kastle christmas, the secluded cabin trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:05:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9140218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edourado/pseuds/edourado
Summary: Karen pissed off a serial killer. So, naturally, frank whisked her away to a secluded cabin in the woods, hidden by and trees and snow





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Lex. Merry Christmas!

Karen pissed off a serial killer.

Of course she did. She was, as she had told Frank quite a few times, now, “just doing her job”.

And she did it. She wrote the series of articles exposing in gruesome detail the process of the newest psychopath in New York City, managing, somehow, to be respectful of the families of the victims privacy and feelings.

So, of course, she became his obsession.

It was not a big deal, to be honest. Both Frank and Matt had their attention focused on her protection. So when the maniac did make his move, they were ready for him. Frank was not with her when he got into her apartment, but Matt was watching the place. He got Kyle Pretchett before she got home from work, Karen never even saw him.  

Kyle never made it close to Karen, but that didn’t stop Frank from going to “protector’s mode”.

He thought she should move to a new place. She rolled her eyes at him, so he insisted that she let him install security cameras on her apartment and building, along with an alarm. She kept rolling her eyes, but indulged him. He called every night, stopped by way more often to check on her. Max spent a few nights sleeping on the foot of her bed, growling at the door every time someone other than Frank stopped for more than five seconds at the hall outside.

But, other than Frank’s over protection, it was all normal for four months. She never checked her cameras, Frank did that whenever he stopped by. There was never anything there, aside from her teenage neighbors occasionally smoking pot on the back entrance of the building or the waitress from 7A making out with the private security guard from 13B.

Until there was.

She was making them some coffee one night, laughing as Max jumped on her legs, asking for the treat he knew was coming, and Frank sat on her couch, watching two weeks worth of surveillance videos.

Karen was making Max sit before she gave him the treat when Frank saw it. The hooded man that walked to the building door less than a minute after Karen walked in from work, two days ago.

“Hey”, he called. “Who’s this?”

She walked to the living room, giving him the coffee mug he liked best and sat by his side.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it one of your neighbors?”

He knew it wasn’t. Fran knew every neighbor, every neighbor relative and friend who visited often. He knew who gambled, who meddled in slightly illegal shit, who was behind on rent, who was cheating on their wife, who was a straight A student in college but was drowning in debt.

The guy with the hoodie was not one of her neighbors.

“No. Maybe he’s someone’s boyfriend, waiting for them?”

He didn’t want to scare her, so he didn’t say anything about the face tattoo that meant he was a former inmate from the prison Kyle was in. But he did warn her.

“I want you to take a different route to and from work, starting tomorrow. If you can, come home a little earlier than usual.”

She sighed inside her coffee mug.

“Frank…”

“Do you have your gun?”

Resting her head on the back of the couch, she nodded.

“Good. Don’t leave home without it.”

She didn’t say anything, but he knew she thought he was exaggerating. He didn’t care, as long as she listened to him.

He slept on her couch that night, after a quick call to Red, to keep him on the loop.

They disagreed on a lot. Karen’s safety, however, was not one of those things.

A week after that, two days after it started snowing, the news went crazy: Kyle had escaped prison. In his cell, pictures of Karen, smiling, from tagged photos on Facebook, were found under his mattress.

She didn’t argue when Frank decided, in two minutes, that she needed to get out of the city. At least until they found him again.

The police offered her protection, but she turned it down. On the record, against Matt and Foggy’s (her lawyers) advice, but Matt agreed that she would be better by Frank’s side while he, Luke, Jessica and Danny combed the city for Kyle.

She took time from work, said she was going back to Vermont for a while, to stay in her childhood home, get away from this whole mess. The only ones who knew her real destination were the police, Ellison and Matt.

Where she was going, in reality, was upstate New York, to a secluded cabin with Frank until they found the serial killer. She accepted that decision without much of an argument. Her life was on the line, after all.

It became a little easier to accept her forced vacation when all of Frank’s worrying translated in touching. Like a lot of it.

The first real change was that he moved in. “Temporarily”. It was just a precaution, just until they could get up and go. Other than sharing her space with him 24/7 (and the co-parenting of Max), that weren’t a lot of changes in their dynamic.

And then, right after he closed the deal with his “contact” that owned the cabin in the middle of nowhere, she was packing, nervous, because they had just seen another strange person standing in front of her building, taking too long to smoke a cigarette, wearing a hoodie.

“All good. We leave in the morning”, he said, hanging up the phone and turning to her.

She looked up at him and caught her finger in the zipper of the suitcase she had been opening. Wincing at the sharp, needle like pain, she yanked her hand away, gasping, taking it to her mouth to suck at the small wound.

Frowning, Frank walked to her and took her hand in his. After a quick inspection, she sighed and said it was nothing while he walked them to the bathroom, where he knew very well where her first aid kit was. Cleaning the small amount of blood with water and antiseptic, he wrapped a band-aid over it, and she noticed, not for the first time, that he was warm. He felt warm, almost cozy, standing there so close to her.

“He’s not gonna get you, you know.”

She nodded, breathing out, trying to relax. She trusted him.    

“I’m not gonna let him”, he continued, taking his time with the band aid, carefully wrapping it, her hand between his. “Or anyone else, for that matter.”

Looking up, she offered him a small smile.

“I know.”

He finished the small curative and they walked out of her bathroom. He sat back on the couch and she continued to pack while he sorted everything out for their trip the next morning. After maybe half an hour, he got up again while she sat on top of her suitcase to zip it closed, her winter clothes making it hard for the zipper to go around it.

“I have to head out for a bit, get some stuff for tomorrow”, he said. She understood he meant “more guns”. “Do you want to come with me?”

She blinked at him, sitting there on top of her luggage.

“Um… What do you think?”

He stepped closer, considering it, and moved to close the suitcase for her.

“I’ll leave Max with you. And you have your gun. Plus the ones under the couch pillows.”

“There are guns under the couch pillows?”

He offered her a smile that was almost condescending.

“Yes, ma’am. And you’re gonna use them if you have to. I’ll be back in less than an hour, if you want to stay.”

She thought about it. It would be faster if he left alone.

“Ok”, she agreed. “I’ll stay. Hurry back, though.”

Did she ask that because she was scared of what could happen in his absence or because his presence was such a comfort for her, for many, many different reasons?

Either way, he nodded. “Not a problem.”

An hour and a half later, she was fidgeting, watching the live security feed for him, for someone else. It was mostly quiet, though, except for the occasional neighbor getting in and out.

When she heard his key in the door again, after the three hour mark, she ran out of the bathroom, where she had been looking through her cabinet, trying to distract herself, wondering what toiletries to pack.

“Oh, my God, there you are!” she said, forgetting herself for a moment, throwing her arms around his neck, making him drop one of the duffel bags hanging from his shoulders (one for his clothes, one for his guns), the plastic bag holding their take out dinner warm against her back when he held her back. “What happened?”

“Thought I had a trail, had to lose it. It was nothing, though.”

“You could have called!”

“Didn’t want to risk it. Sorry”, he said, looking at her face, one hand raising to her hair in a calming motion. “It’s all good, don’t worry. Anything here?”

“Nothing”, she said, stepping away from him, taking the food from his hands.

After dinner, he went downstairs to load the truck (not his usual one. Another, new, with a license that would never trace back to him or her) for the next morning.

“We leave at five”, he declared after she got out of the shower. Max settled on his little bed at the foot of hers, his new favorite place to sleep.

“ _Five_? In the morning?”

Again, he smiled and she locked her knees.

“Yes, ma’am. I don’t want traffic.”

The extra touching started then, one would guess. After that hug, they both seemed to realize that no, the world would not explode if they touched too much. Plus, they’re friends, right? Friends touch, sometimes. It’s nothing, it’s… normal.

The silent shift was unanimous, natural.

At four AM, Karen woke up to the smell of coffee and what she found out were frittatas. Max was licking her foot, as per Frank’s order to wake her up.

“Morning, ma’am”, he said, making her a plate. “Eat up, get ready and let’s hit the road.”

He scolded her when she sneaked small pieces to Max, who sat under the table, his face on her knee in a silent request.

“Don’t spoil him.”

They washed the dishes together and she realized he was trying to distract her, criticizing her dish-soap to water ratio, her speed, the way she organized her cabinets.

She was fine with being distracted, for once.

When she walked out of the building, Max trailing behind her, the frigid winter air blasted her in the face, waking her up for good. She opened the door to the truck, that Frank had pulled around, Max got in and settled on his designated pile of blankets on the back seat, she closed the door after herself and off they went.

After the first hour, she slipped her boots off and put her sock wrapped feet on the dashboard, opening a bag of chips, offering one to him.

“No, ma’am, thank you. I’d like to keep my cholesterol level to a minimum, if you don’t mind.”

Five minutes later, though, she was feeding him chips while he looked for a song he liked on the radio.

He drove steadily, slowing down a bit when snow drizzled down, and they shared coffee from his thermos.

At seven in the morning, they stopped at a diner for a second breakfast. He placed a cap on her head (which, come to think of it, she could have done by herself) and told her to put her sunglasses on. Her hair was braided, resting on her left collarbone. Frank opened the door for her and they walked into the diner, her hand in his. He didn’t let go after he helped her out of the truck, neither did she pull it back.

Karen smiled at the waitress when she said that “yes, sure”, Max could come in. Karen sat between Frank and the back of the booth, his arm around her back, his eyes scanning the diner and watching the window outside every minute or so.

When they went back to the road, Frank’s coffee thermos was filled again and Max settled to sleep, his belly full of the bowl of meat the nice waitress fixed for him.

“She liked you”, Karen said, trying to keep her tone of voice casual.

“Shut up”, he said, putting the truck back on the road, checking his rearview mirrors.

“Who smiles that much at this hour? Honestly?”

He said nothing, but rolled his eyes at her when she looked at him.

When he turned up the lane that would take them into the woods, she looked back, just to make sure they were not being followed.  

“So far, so good”, she said, still twisted around, looking out the back window. He tugged on her elbow to make her sit back straight.

“It’s gonna be fine, Karen, this is just a precaution. Nobody’s following us here.”

When they arrived, Karen was surprised to see their cabin faced a lake, which was frozen, the trees surrounding it topped with fresh white snow. Behind the modest cabin, the woods. Trees that grew close together and cut off the view, also covered in snow.

She thought Frank was going to park the car in front of the house, but he drove around it and parked on the other side, facing the way they came. She understood he wanted the truck facing the road, in case they needed to leave quickly.

Her boots touched the soft snow on the ground and Max jumped off the car after her, immediately running around, to the edge of the lake, sniffing a few bushes, and then back, to look up at Frank, who reached his hand to Karen while the other petted the dog.

“Careful”, he told her, fingers around hers. “Might be slippery.”

It wasn’t. Under the snow, it was gravel, she could feel it under the thick soles of her boots. But she held his hand, anyway.

Unlocking the door, Frank opened it and let her get in. The air inside was stuffy and stale, there were sheets over the furniture.

“I’ll get the stuff from the car”, he said behind her. “Open a few windows, to let the air in.”

While they removed the sheets from the furniture, the light coming in from the open windows and a chilly air running through the walls, Frank explained that his friend had gotten the house in his divorce, but never felt like coming back after it, so he kept it closed, stopping by once or twice a year to air it out.

There were two bedrooms. Frank didn’t ask, just put her stuff on the big one, with the en suite bathroom. She didn’t complain, but smiled at him after he placed her suitcase in front of the bed.

They were fixing lunch in the kitchen when she started to shiver. All the windows  - and the back door - were still open, and Karen looked behind her, to the living room, where the curtains on the windows flowed with the winter breeze.

Before she could say anything, Frank took the wooden spoon from her hand, bumping his hip on hers.

“Go close everything. I’ll finish this.”

“Ok”, she said, feeling strangely light for someone who was hiding from a serial killer on the hunt for her. “Don’t ruin my sauce”, she joked.

Frank pushed her away playfully.

“You offend me. Go.”

She closed the windows in the living room, the one in the hallway and the ones in her room and Frank’s. His door was adjacent to hers, and she looked at the bed he’d be occupying, Max’s dog bed at it’s foot. She couldn’t know for sure, but, if Karen had to guess, she’d say it was the first decent bed he slept on since he got out of the hospital.

“Aw, dude, come on!” she heard him say, from the kitchen. Leaving his door open, she walked back to where he was, smiling when she spotted Max, sitting, looking up at him, tail wagging happily, a trail of wet snow all over the floor.

“Someone’s excited”, she said, while Frank snuffed out the flame on the stove, handing her the spoon again.

“It’s ready, can you fix the table?”

“Yeah”, she answered, watching as Frank walked around the dog, who jumped on his legs, trying to find a mop, or something, to clean the muddy mess left behind by excited paws.

During lunch (a simple pasta with tomato sauce and some store bought meatballs), he asked, for the hundredth time, if she had packed her gun. She said yes, she did, but it wouldn’t hurt if she learned how to properly shoot it. They had nothing but time to kill, so maybe he could teach her?

(Truth is, Karen knows how to shoot pretty well, thank you very much. But the thought of Frank teaching her was a pleasant one. She didn’t dwell on it too much.)

“Yeah?” he asked, looking at her, fork in hand, pasta wrapped around it.

She shrugged.

“I think it’d be a good idea.”

He looked at her for a second or two, that face of his making her warm inside, and she made a point not to squirm.

“Ok, sure.”

They sat there for a few more minutes, talking about nothing in particular while Max nudged their legs, wanting some of the food. When Frank got up to take the dishes back to the kitchen, her phone rang. Matt was calling, wanted news on them.

She assured them she was ok, they had made it to the cabin. There were no news on Kyle, but the police was still looking, interrogating people and what not. He asked to speak to Frank.

He was doing the dishes, so she placed the phone on his ear, his shoulder securing it. He gave her the soaking sponge and walked to dry his hands.

“Red. Yeah, it’s fine. Anything on your end?”

He walked to the living room and Karen looked out the window in front of the sink, watching the trees behind the cabin, trying to look deeper into the woods.

“Yeah, ok. Will do.”

Frank came back and set her phone on the counter after hanging up.

“Red’s got his panties in a bunch’, he said, taking the dish towel to dry the ones she had already washed. “Keeps telling me to watch out for you.”

Karen smiled.

“He’s just worried.”

“I know, but it’s annoying.” He opened the cabinet to store the plates. “‘Just keep an eye on her, ok?’” he said, copying Matt’s voice. Exactly like him.

Karen looked at him, a smile already creeping up.

“Oh my God”, she said, a soapy glass on her hands. “You sound just like him.”

He closed the cabinet and turned to her again.

“‘I’m just trying to keep this city safe, Frank.’”

The laughter exploded out of her before she could stop it. It was spot on. Even the way he stood, the crease in his brow, the tone of voice, everything.

Frank stood there quoting Matt for a few minutes and she laughed all the while, spraying water at him when he would say something particularly funny.

And hour later, give or take, he walked out of his room and reached his hand out for her, who sat on the couch, legs under a blanket, reading a book.

“What is it?” she asked, taking his hand. He pulled her up and she noticed he was wearing his coat.

“We’re gonna do a quick run to the city”, he said, handing her her coat. “I want to get you a new phone, yours should be off while we’re here. Plus, we need to get more food.”

They left Max at the cabin, pacing around as if he knew he was to stay alert for anybody other than them.

After he parked on the big supermarket parking lot, Frank, again, took her hand when she got out of the car.

“Stay close to me, ok?” he said, his Punisher voice in place.

(It was, actually, his normal voice, but Karen noticed that he had a different voice for her, a softer one, as if it came from the back of his throat, but also from the tip of his tongue. She liked that voice, and, so far, didn’t see him using it with anybody else.)

She got a shopping basket and he filled it with items like more pasta, rice, vegetables, coffee and whatnot. When it became heavy enough that she had to hook it on her elbow, he took it from her, switching hands, his fingers tight around hers the whole time. But, in the end, she had to get a shopping cart, because they kept adding items like ice cream, cookies, two or three magazines for her, and it didn’t fit in the basket anymore.

(She tried not to look at the condoms when they passed them on the aisle.)

The last item they got was a burner phone for her. While they waited in line to pay, Frank pulled her closer to him, his eyes on the front door.

With her nose practically on the collar of his shirt, Karen looked up at his face, his expression hard.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, I just…” he trailed off, following someone with his eyes. “Don’t like the look on those guys. _Don’t_ turn around”, he warned when she made to look, too.

“Do you think it’s him?” she asked, her heart suddenly racing.

He kept looking at whoever he was looking at and the line moved in front of them.

“No”, he finally decided. “Just… Regular creepy. Keep facing this way.”

While they waited, he complained about the slow pace of the line, but she found out she didn’t mind. Careful to keep her face hidden, he pulled her between him and the cart, hands on the cart handle, eyes never resting, scanning, looking, vigilant. Karen found she didn’t mind that spot.

After a two minutes, maybe three, she sighed, and, really, truly not thinking about it, took a small step closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder, her nose right there on his neck.

His left hand let go of the shopping cart to land on the small of her back, thumb running small circles against her coat.

“Tired?”

“A bit”, she said, thinking that she rather liked his neck. Especially when it was this close to her.

“We’ll go in a bit, and then you can sleep. No wake up call tomorrow.”

She smiled, not because of the prospect of sleeping in, but because he wasn’t pushing her away, making up excuses to step back. He was standing there, letting her rest her head on his shoulder, keeping her close with a hand on her back.

There was a killer on the loose obsessed with her, but, right then, Karen was fine.

“You planning on having a party?” he asked when she put the box with six bottles of wine for the cashier to scan.

“Well. I don’t know how long we’re gonna stay here, and I don’t think you’ll want to keep coming back, so I figured, stock up.”

Her smile was too on the wicked side to be casual, but he smiled down at her anyway, absently moving a lock of her hair from her face.

When their truck approached the house again, he slowed down and flashed the lights once. Max’s head popping behind the main glass window, along with the tip of his tail going fast from side to side, told them they had had no visitors.

After all their shopping was stored away, Karen sat by his side on the couch, glass of wine in hand, and watched as he took his guns out of his holster (she _loved_ it when he wore his holster. She did) and the one on his ankle, placing them on the coffee table. He turned his face to her and she sustained his look.

“Where’s yours?” he asked.

“My purse.”

He took the glass from her hand and took a sip, tipping his head on the direction of her bedroom. So charming she wanted to cry.

“Go get it.”

Smiling, she got up and walked to get her .380 from her purse. Walking back, she placed it in his hand and got her glass of wine back from him.

“Ok”, he said. “First of all. You know how to put it together?”

“I know how to put bullets in it”, she offered, taking a sip of wine, caressing Max’s ear when he plopped on her side in the couch.

Frank raised his brows and offered her that lazy side smile.

“Ok. Pay attention, now.”

Why was it so sexy, to watch him dismantling her gun on the coffee table? Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the fire he had started in the fireplace, maybe it was the way he sounded, his voice low and deep, but soft, teaching her all about the tiny little pieces of her gun and how they went together.

She wondered if it was just her. Stopped wondering when he, again, placed a section of her hair behind her ear while she sat on the floor, facing the coffee table, listening to his voice whisper instructions on her ear whle he sat on the couch, his legs on each of her side, her glass of wine on his left hand.

“That’s it. Slide it now, that way.”

Did he have to sound so smooth? And downright-

“Good girl.”

-dirty?

Turning her head, she smiled up at him.

“See? Not that hard, huh?”

“No”, she said, her face angled up to his.

“Do it again”.

He made her dismantle and put her gun together three more times, and then one of his own. By the time she finished it, he was lying on the couch, eyes closed. Sleeping. They had drank almost an entire bottle of wine, and she was feeling somewhat lightheaded, too.

With a glance at Max, who slept in front of the fireplace, she got up and joined him on the couch, resting her face on that same spot in his neck she had found on the supermarket. With a sigh, he moved a bit in his sleep, moving his arm around her, resting his hand on her hip.

Before she fell asleep, feeling as if she were on a romantic vacation instead of hiding from a killer, Karen lifted one of her legs and hooked her ankle around Frank’s, who adjusted his hand on her hip, his chest rising and falling as he breathed.

.:.

She woke up when he moved from under her, her feet feeling cold.

“Ok. C’mon, ma’am.”

“Hmm, where?” she asked, turning towards his voice, keeping her eyes closed.

“Get you to bed. C’mon.”

And then he was picking her up, placing one of her arms around his neck, his own under her back and knees.

He could wake her up, she could walk to her own bed, thank you. But this was an indulgence they both enjoyed more than they should, so she said nothing and he said nothing, just walked to her bed with her in his arms.

.:.

The next morning, after breakfast, he took her gun and a box of bullets and took her to a small clearing on the woods, behind the first trees of the house. It was time to properly learn how to shoot.

He stood too close to her, that voice of his on her ear the whole time, congratulating her when she hit the targets, talking her through reloading, coaching her to hit the moving tire that swung on a tree branch.

“Open those eyes, now, both of ‘em.”

She let out a slow breath, seeing it cloud in front of her face, and opened both her eyes.

“Don’t hold your breath.”

She let it out and it came a bit struggled, but the gun had nothing to do with it.

“Fire away”.

Her finger squeezed the trigger and her bullets hit the paper he had pinned on the tire.

“Atta girl”, he praised, walking from behind her, pulling her a bit further from the tire.

They practiced for maybe an hour, and then he made her dismantle and clean the gun again, helping her when she forgot a detail, laughing when she looked at the small piece she had left out, wondering where it fit.

The day was, mostly, uneventful. They laughed as Max ran and slipped on the frozen lake, chasing a squirrel, he made them soup for dinner, they sat on the couch, drinking wine again, their backs resting on each arm of the couch, her legs resting on top of his, her cheeks red from the fireplace heat, attention on him, while he told her stories about the army.

His burner rang around seven in the morning on the next day, when they were both asleep, together on the couch again, the snow falling steadily outside.  

“Red”, he said, voice gruff from sleep, and she cuddled further against him, unwilling to wake up just yet.

She was very close to his face, so she heard Matt tell him that Kyle had been caught an hour ago, he was in the hospital. A cop had shot him during the chase, he was in a coma. It was safe for them to go back, now.

Karen opened her eyes, meeting Frank’s, the phone still glued to his ear.

“That’s good news”, he said to Matt, looking at her, his eyes dark, his expression… Different, watching her.

They stared at each other for a good few seconds while Matt spoke, explaining the details. Karen raised her brows to him and the corners of his mouth raised in a simple, almost peaceful smile.

“Thing is”, he said. “It’ snowing pretty hard in here. I don’t think we should hit the road just yet.”

Karen smiled and bit her lower lip, one of her hands rising without her permission to play with the collar of his shirt.

“ _Oh. You think it’ll clear out soon?_ ” Matt asked.

“I think so. We’ll wait it out.”

“ _I’d think Karen would be itching to get back._ ”

“Yeah, well.  She’s sleeping, now.”

She suppressed a giggle and hid her face in his chest, his hand moving around her back.

“We’ll talk when she wakes up. I’ll get back to you.”    

“ _Alright. Keep me posted._ ”

“Will do”.

When he hung up, he reached over her to place the phone on the coffee table, his face ending up mere inches from hers. The leg that she kept intertwined with his moved a bit and his free hand caressed her hair, just the tip of his fingers.

“We’re in the clear”, he said.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“What do you think?”

She looked at him, weighing what “staying” meant. Going back home would be go back to her routine, her job, her apartment, to their usual thing. Unlikely friends, allies, him being a bodyguard of sorts, her being his informant and his pet sitter, occasionally.

Here, though, they were… Something. Something more. Not really something, but it was more than nothing.

“I think we should wait it out”, she decided.

With a small crease on his brow, that came and went quickly, he moved to better place the cover over both of them, the tip of his nose bumping on hers. His voice, when he spoke, actually rose some shivers up her back.

“We’ll wait, then.”

His arm around her, he pulled her closer, until she moved her own arm to wrap around him.

They slept again until eleven, when Max jumped over both of them, demanding to be fed.

The next time they went out of the cabin, back to that supermarket, they both desperately, silently, looked for a hanging mistletoe. 


	2. Part 2

She kept saying that he needed a haircut. But, if not getting one meant she was going to keep weaving her fingers through it every time he was within her grasp… Well, he was just not gonna get one.

He should not like that so much. Sure, he had always liked it, the feeling of someone’s hand (preferably a lady’s hand) in his hair. Maria used it all the time as a trick to get him into doing something she wanted, to get him into bed, to get him to fall asleep, to calm him down.

Since her, however, he had, honest to God, forgotten he liked that so much. Plus, it’s not like his army regulation buzz cut allowed for much… Playing. Since he became the Punisher, though, and had to go underground for a while, his hair care had faltered a bit. And he did mean to fix that, he really did. But he never got around to it, and it actually helped him go unnoticed, so he kept postponing it.

He did get rid of the beard. Told himself that it was more practical, but he knew, deep down, that it was because of the way she kept frowning at it when they first met after all those months.

“You’re a mess, Frank”, she had said, finally, once she got up from that bench, heels click clacking on the floor, hair up in a neat bun and God. She looked so good. “You need to shave.”

So he did. For _convenience_ , he kept repeating to himself. Not for Karen.

(It was for Karen. One hundred per cent, for Karen. But that fact would die with him.)

The haircut, though, kept being put off. And she didn’t seem to mind that so much, so that was that.

But he did, in the end, decide he needed to, at least, trim it down. It was getting out of hand, he actually had to move it aside once when he was shooting a pervert. Didn’t affect his aim, the scumbag dropped right where Frank wanted him to (at the feet of his abused wife), but the fact that he did have to brush it aside meant he needed a trim.

And then, of course, she had to go and become Kyle Pretchett newest, biggest obsession, so he and Max moved in with her until he got the cabin in the woods for them. Frank wasn’t a man to hide, but Karen was too important for him to gamble with her life. He knew that he could end Kyle five minutes, but she mattered more. Her safety mattered more. So off he went, away to the woods with her, his dog and his truck. Let Red take the lead on this one, he didn’t mind.

He didn’t mind it at all, actually. It was nice to see Max running around, for a change, he didn’t get to do that a lot in the city. Frank laughed at his attempts to hunt squirrels, his less than gracious spins on the frozen lake in front of the cabin, his rolling on the fresh snow.

And Karen, well. No one in the planet would say that she was a target. She hummed in the kitchen, poured them glasses of wine, smirked at him, sat on the floor with Max, endless questions of “who’s a good boy”, her blonde hair shining in the winter light.

They were already close, but they got closer even before they got out of the city. He took her hand to keep her close to him when they were in public, the official reason being that it was in case he needed to pull her out of the way quickly. The real one was that he liked the feel of her fingers around his.

Like pieces on a puzzle, they arranged themselves comfortably, perfectly. In the diners, his arm would curve around the back of the booths, around her shoulders, her right side always pressed to him. In the car, she would reach to him and feed him chips, chocolate, beef jerky, cookies, bites of her burger, forkfuls of her salad, french fries.

And he would stand behind her, guiding her around the improvised shooting range he put together for her, because she wanted to “learn” (she was a pretty good shot. His praises would tint her cheeks red, that smile a prize for him, every time). He would whisper the steps of dismantling her gun and putting it back together, cleaning it, counting bullets, teaching her about his own guns, safety, chamber, kick, aim, he was there in her ear, drinking wine, getting drunk on her perfume, falling asleep on the couch, waking up with her curled up to him, her face in his neck, ankle twisted around his.

Yes, Frank was there to protect her, he would always be, as long as he could breathe. But did he enjoy her proximity, her touches? Did he like to know how her skin felt under his fingers? Did he like to smell her shampoo way  more often that it was normal?

You can bet your ass he did.

Red called with the news. Good news, of course, Kyle had been found, had been shot, was in a coma. Frank had half a mind to drive back to New York and finish the job himself, but Karen was lying there on the couch with him, pressed against him, smiling at him, _looking_ at him, it was snowing outside, they had a ton of food in the fridge, wine to drink, a cabin all to themselves, shit, they were not going back.

After they agreed to wait, after she had snuggled up further into him, after he let his hand wander up her back, in her hair, his leg around hers, her breath on his neck, the shy tip of her fingers touching his jaw, they fell asleep on the couch again, too wrapped up in each other, they both knew it, this was too intimate, the way he looked at her was too intimate, the way she opened up was too intimate.

But there they were. Too intimate. Fine with it.

A few lines had been crossed already, they both knew this was more than just a friendship. Still, he felt like he needed a solid excuse to keep advancing. It was the holidays, Christmas time, some mistletoes were bound to be hung around this city. That would be nice.

But no. No mistletoes. Not a one. They went to different diners, they went to different stores, they stopped at random gas station stores. Nothing. Christmas came and went and it was like the universe was telling him to step up his game.

He thought about Maria, and the one time her brother had used the typical Christmas custom to make a move on a girl.

“Ugh”, she had said to Frank, watching the whole thing. “Seriously. He needs to up his game. Mistletoe, really? How high school.”

He had to laugh when he remembered it. Okay, babe. Point taken.  

So that was a bust. He would have to figure out another way. It was becoming difficult to resist, especially when she would keep nursing those glasses of wine, lips taking a lovely, enticing red stain. Especially when she would keep running her fingers through his hair like that, while she sat there on the couch, already tipsy, lazily running her nails from the base of his scalp to the middle of his head, behind his ear, slow little scratches that had him shivering down his spine.

“You need a haircut”, she said, voice slow, so slow, the wine was making her mellow, the snow and the cold outside making her soft, the fire he started on the fireplace every night making her warm.

“Do I?” he asked, letting his eyes fall closed when she kept on with her caress.

“Mm-hmm”, she hummed, hand travelling down his neck, now, going around and stopping on his chest, pulling until his back rested against the couch she was laying on and her mouth was right there on his ear. “You never stop working?” she asked.

Frank eyed the guns he had been cleaning, the pieces of them scattered around the coffee table.

“Keeps me busy”, he said, turning his face, looking at hers, those electric blue eyes staring at him, cheeks tinted pink, lips stained red.

He wondered, just then, what her tongue would taste like.

“Hmm”, was her only reply, but he heard the comment she wanted to make. He heard her offer of keeping him busy some other way.

He was staring at the way her teeth pulled on her lower lip, paying close and undivided attention to the movement when his phone vibrated on the floor. He actually let out an annoyed breath and her timid smile only made him want to close that gap a little faster.

“It’s Matt”, she said, after taking a peek at the caller id.

“Of course it is”, he sighed cursing the timing of the man. “Yes, Red, what is it?”

It was nothing. Absolutely nothing. He just wanted to know if everything was ok, if they needed anything, wanted to speak to Karen. Basically he just called to be in the way.

Karen’s voice was soft on the phone, answering his questions, assuring him that she was “fine, I promise”. Her eyes on Frank, and then on the ceiling, when she moved to lie more comfortably on the couch, not on her side like she had been, and Frank wanted to roll his eyes when she laughed of a joke, told him “don’t worry, Matt”, too soft.

When she handed the phone back to him, getting up and walking towards the kitchen, he watched as her hips swayed with each step.

“Is she drunk?” Red asked.

“Lil bit”, Frank replied, watching as Max pranced after her, pressing his face to her leg, wanting attention. He knew the feeling. “She’s fine, though.”

“Ok”, Red seemed to be weighing the fact. “Ok, then. Just…”

He missed Karen. Frank could tell. Well, tough shit, buddy. He was not giving her back anytime soon.

“Call me if you need anything, ok?”

“Sure thing, Red. Good night, now.”

Frank finished the call and got up to go after her in the kitchen. She had a piece of toast in her hand, covered in whatever dip she had picked up at their last trip to the market.

“I have an idea”, she said, cheeks so red, reaching out and touching her toast to his mouth, so he had no choice but take a bite. Guacamole. Not the best one he had tasted. “Let’s ice skate.”

He scoffed, chewing and swallowing, shaking his head.

“No.”

“Why not?!”

“First of all”, he said, going back to the living room. “We don’t have skates.”

“Yes, we do! I found some in the closet in my bedroom!”

She whined and pulled on his hand, saying “please” over and over, and Max bit on the fabric of his pant leg, pulling, apparently copying her move, just because.

Finally, he sighed, let himself be pulled, looked her in the eyes, said “ok.”

She squealed, ran to get the skates and in less than 10 minutes, he was watching as she took tentative steps on the ice, arms out around her, gloves and puffy coat and wool beanie on her head making him smile, watching from the edge, hands on his pockets.

It was a bit dark, only the lights of the house and the truck lighting the frozen lake. Max ran and slid after Karen, spinning around her, stumbling and falling, just going with it and gliding on his back.

She laughed and he tried not to when she stumbled, almost falling, but catching herself. Looking at him, she reached out her hand and he found himself moving towards her, taking it, letting himself be pulled, steading her when she would falter, pulling on her hand, making her spin and glide, smiling to himself when she would laugh out loud.

“You’re good at this”, she said, holding his right hand with both of hers, trying to skate backwards.

Frank shrugged.

“Lisa loved it.”

Eyes on him, she smiled.

“I feel like Lisa and I would have been good friends”, she said, pulling him, looking behind her, watching where she was going.

“Yeah”, he agreed, musing at the fact that the memory of his daughter, his son and his late wife didn’t hurt as much when he was around her. “I think so, too.”

Max had already rushed back inside, probably too cold to keep running around them. He’s pulling her by the hand a bit, making jokes about how he’s gonna have her shooting a few targets from here, making her giggle, watching her hair flying behind her and he cheeks get too red from the cold wind.  

Fuck, he’s ridiculous.

The main thing about their stay here, Frank noticed, is that time slipped away from them easily. Not that they ran out of it (they’re blissfully, happily without a deadline to go back to the city), they just keep losing track of the hours, the days. They woke up and had breakfast at noon, lunch at five, dinner at one in the morning, went to bed at three, sometimes four, sometimes just when the sun would start rising.

They only realized it was Christmas when she looked at her phone on the 25th, around eleven in the morning, while he flipped them some pancakes.

“Oh, hey!” she exclaimed from the table, lifting her face from the phone, smiling at him. “Merry Christmas, Frank!”

She had placed a kiss on his cheek a proceeded to bake cookies. “Christmas cookies”.

Now, right when he was holding her hand, their arms extended and she was balancing in one foot, they heard fireworks, far away. Looking up, they could spot the lights behind the trees, back in the city.

They slid to a stop on the ice, and she looked at his face when they halted, standing close to him, fingers squeezing him.

“Happy New Year, Frank. Apparently.”

There they were, too close together again, he saw his hand rising to her hair, like it would, on it’s own , her skin and his fingertips cold, their breaths condensing before them.

“Happy New Year, ma’am”, he replied, not too loud, because she was right there, so close.

God, he wanted to kiss her.

One flick of blue eyes to his lips and he was leaning, her breath was catching slightly, and his mouth was touching hers, his chest was warm from the inside out, the tip of his tongue touched hers, she sighed in his mouth, shit, shit, he was gone.

New Year kisses were supposed to be chaste. A peck. Quick, not this long, slow, intense thing, full of tongues and nibbles and sighs and moans.

Alas, there they were. He had one hand on the nape of her neck, a bunch of her hair caught in it, keeping her face against him. Her own were on his waist, fingers hooked on his belt loops, and on his chest, pulling on the flap of his coat, opening her mouth to his, swiping her tongue against his, feeling so good, she felt so good, he had no business enjoy how good she felt.

A gust of frigid wind blew then, hitting them from the side and she gasped.

“Oh, my God, I’m freezing”, she said against his face, laughing, and he leaned further to get another kiss, a long press of his lips against hers, before turning around and pulling her off the ice.

They removed their skates on the porch and she ran inside, rushing back in, where it was warm. Max, smart dog that he is, was curled up in front of the fireplace, the chew toy Karen had given him between his paws.

“Oh, shit”, Karen was saying, rubbing her hands together, standing in the middle of the living room. “My toes are frozen.”

He walked to her, caught her face in his hands and resumed their New Year kiss. She had her hands climbing his chest towards his neck when he took a step further, making her take one back.

He didn’t even feel her unzipping his coat, just felt when her hands rose to his shoulders, pushing it off, and he had to let go of her to get rid of the thing. When they reached the couch, he turned them around and sat down, her lips, slightly swollen already, making his insides twist, his blood running a little faster.

“C’mere”, he called, pulling on her hand.

She sat down by his side and he pulled her legs over his, taking the time to remove her cold socks, rubbing his palms on her soles. He was going to wrap them on the blanket they kept on the couch, but she pulled on his arm, making him lean towards her, pulling him by the neck when he was close enough, opening her mouth on his in the most delicious way, pulling him on top of her, settling her legs on each side of him.

Her body under his felt too good, too fast. He moved his arms to support his own weight, to pull back a little, but she arched towards him, tossing her head back and, suddenly, he was latched on to her neck, kissing and biting and sucking a little bit.

“Ma’am”, he tried, after a minute or two, pulling back again.

“Hmm, shh, no, no ‘ma’am’”, she interrupted, playing dirty, sucking his earlobe inside her mouth, running the tip of her tongue over it.

He chuckled.

“Don’t shush me”. It came out as a warning, almost.

“Why not? You shush me at least five times a day”, she said, looking at his eyes when he lifted his head to look at her, a stupid smile on, he could feel just how stupid it was.

“Do I?”

Instead of answering, she lifted her own head, capturing his lips with hers again, and Frank kissed her back. Because how could he not?

He _should_ not, of course, but that was a problem for the city, for later. Not for here, for now.

For now, the problem is whether to keep kissing her, running his hands up her covered legs, her sides, a strip of skin under his fingers at the limit of her thick sweatpants and the hem of her top, or to work on warming her feet up.

Karen decided for him, moaning under him like that, both her legs tight around his, one of her hands under his shirt, going around his back, fingers working through his hair that way that made him shiver and moan himself.

Max, on the other hand, had other ideas. Frank had heard him whining a little, but had paid no attention until he felt his cold, wet snout on his cheek, the crying sounds right there by their side, one of his paws trying to pull his hand from Karen’s hair.  

“What, man, what?” Frank complained, looking at the dog while Karen went “aaw!” and reached her hand to pet him. “Go play, Max, come on”, he said, waving him off, throwing one of Karen’s discarded socks for him to fetch.

It worked for a few seconds. When Max ran to get it, Frank went back to his task, licking a path up her neck until he reached her mouth again, lifting one of her knees on his side to better adjust her against him, rolling his hips a little, enjoying the sound she made.

Until, there was Max again, licking his cheek, catching a bit of the fabric of Karen’s sleeve between his teeth and pulling, groaning, now.

“Oh, that’s just _rich_ , isn’t it”, Frank complained, looking at him again. “What do you want, dude?”

Karen, with both her legs still around him, looked and reached to Max again, rubbing his ear.

“I think he’s a little jealous”, she said.

Max sat there, enjoying the petting, eyes almost closed, but not quite. He was watching Frank. Smug little bastard.

As an experiment of sorts, he turned Karen’s face to his again, touching his mouth to hers and, sure enough, his dog complained again, sticking his face between theirs, this time not stopping until he successfully separated him from Karen, climbing the couch and wiggling between them until Frank was off her and sitting on the other end, one of his feet touching the rug, and Max was settled on her stomach, a very solid barrier.

Karen laughed and Frank groaned.

“Awesome. Great, buddy, that’s just great.”

He got up, pecking Karen’s lips quickly, before Max could stop him, and pried the dog off her, walking towards the kitchen.

Opening the fridge, he got the big chunk of meat he had bought the day before and was planning to grill for them on the next day.

“I can’t believe I have to bribe you, now”, he said, taking the meat off the plastic and showing it to Max, who sat, already eager, waiting for instructions (a treat like that only came after he had performed some sort of task for Frank). “I’ll give you this. You’re gonna eat it. And then you’re gonna go to sleep. Got it?”

Max blinked, eyes fixed on his prize.

“Max. Eat it and then sleep. You got it?”

With a huff Frank took as an affirmative answer, he placed the prime quality beef on his plate by the door, watching as Max picked it up and went to gnaw on it on his prefered spot in the kitchen: in front of the stove, where was warm.

Frank washed his hands quickly on the sink and then turned to walk back into the living room, where Karen was still draped on the couch, turned around to watch them, a smile on her face. Her coat was gone, discarded on the floor.

Before he could say anything - think anything, really - she reached her hand out for his. When he took it, she pulled him back on top of her, smiling and biting that lower lip, hand inside his hair again, oh, shit, yes, there was nothing to think about. Nothing to say.

In the middle of the night, when he was having fun watching her squirm under him (after he drove like a maniac to the closest 24h convenience store to pick up a box of condoms), he realized that he does shush her a lot. When she let out a particularly loud moan, he placed his hand over her mouth, shushing her, watching as she closed her eyes, biting on the fleshy part of his palm.  

She didn’t seem to mind the shushing right then, with her right hand on the headboard to give her some leverage against him, the left one in his hair again, tugging so nicely.

He was _definitely_ postponing that haircut again.


End file.
